Most merchants have replaced traditional gift certificates with gift cards, which are credit card-like in design and allow for the merchant to program the magnetic strip in the amount that the gift-providing customer desires. In the online realm, merchants provide gift credit in the form of gift codes, which upon purchase may be electronically communicated, via email or the like, to the gift-recipient.
In either instance, the gift recipient must remember to bring the gift card to the merchant or remember the gift code or location of the gift code when redeeming the credit towards a subsequent purchase. In many instances the recipient of a gift card may forget to bring the card with them to the associated merchant or otherwise forget that they have an outstanding gift card for that particular merchant. Likewise, the recipient of a gift code may be unable to locate the gift code or may have deleted the gift code communication prior to redeeming the gift code.
Therefore, a need exists to develop systems, methods, computer program products and the like that allows for gift-providing customers to gift credit to a gift-recipient, such that upon receipt of the credit, the gift-recipient can ostensibly forget that they have the credit yet subsequently have the credit automatically applied towards future purchases. In effect, the desired invention eliminates the need for the gift-recipient to remember to bring a gift card or gift code to a merchant and, moreover, allows the gift-recipient to redeem the credit even if they forget that they have the gift credit.